In case you missed it, the Oscars were this past weekend and Birdman was the big winner. The Academy’s choice to award Alejandro González Iñárritu's fever dream was a genuine shock, with Boyhood the running favourite for many months. Nonetheless, some things never change, and in that vein it's certainly a non-surprise the Academy also hardly noticed the most ambitious blockbuster of 2014: the Christopher Nolan space epic, Interstellar. Indeed, I use the phrase "non-surprise", because how could it be a winner when it was only nominated for the bare minimum of five Oscars in technical categories that are reserved as consolation prizes?

In 2008, Jennifer Teege was strolling around a library in her native Germany for books on the depression she'd been struggling with when she spotted a cover photograph that looked strangely familiar: her biological mother.
So began a shocking odyssey in which Teege would learn the painful truth: Her maternal grandfather was Amon Goeth, the infamous Nazi war criminal portrayed by Ralph Fiennes in Steven Spielberg's Oscar-winning film Schindler's List.
Now Teege, a German-born black woman who was given up for adoption as a child, has chronicled her journey in a memoir due out in the United States in April
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In 2008, Jennifer Teege was strolling around a library in her native Germany for books on the depression she'd been struggling with when she spotted a cover photograph that looked strangely familiar: her biological mother.
So began a shocking odyssey in which Teege would learn the painful truth: Her maternal grandfather was Amon Goeth, the infamous Nazi war criminal portrayed by Ralph Fiennes in Steven Spielberg's Oscar-winning film Schindler's List.
Now Teege, a German-born black woman who was given up for adoption as a child, has chronicled her journey in a memoir due out in the United States in April
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Stumbling across that list of best-edited films yesterday had me assuming that there might be other nuggets like that out there, and sure enough, there is American Cinematographer's poll of the American Society of Cinematographers membership for the best-shot films ever, which I do recall hearing about at the time. But they did things a little differently.
Basically, in 1998, cinematographers were asked for their top picks in two eras: films from 1894-1949 (or the dawn of cinema through the classic era), and then 1950-1997, for a top 50 in each case. Then they followed up 10 years later with another poll focused on the films between 1998 and 2008.
Unlike the editors' list, though, ties run absolutely rampant here and allow for way more than 50 films in each era to be cited.
I'd love to see what these lists would look like combined, however. I imagine "Citizen Kane," which was on top of the 1894-1949 list,
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Now this is a list that could result in a lot of fascinating dissection and thanks to HitFix it comes to our attention almost three years after it was originally released back in 2012, celebrating the Motion Picture Editors Guild's 75th anniversary. Over at HitFix, Kris Tapley asks, "Is this news to anyone elsec" Um, yes, I find it immensely interesting and a perfect starting point for anyone looking to further explore the art of film editing.
In an accompanying article we get the particulars concerning what films were eligible and how films were to be considered:
In our Jan-feb 12 issue, we asked Guild members to vote on what they consider to be the Best Edited Films of all time. Any feature-length film from any country in the world was eligible. And by "Best Edited," we explained, we didn't just mean picture; sound, music and mixing were to be considered as well.
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[Editor's Note: This post is presented in partnership with Movies On Demand. Catch up on this year’s Awards Season contenders and past winners On Demand. Today's list is a selection of the best war movies on Mod.]
"The Hurt Locker" (2008)When a new sergeant, James, takes over a highly trained bomb disposal team amidst violent conflict, he surprises his two subordinates, by plunging them into a deadly game of urban combat.
"The English Patient" (1996)During World War II, when a mysterious stranger is rescued from a fiery plane crash, he is cared for by American allies unaware of the dangerous secrets of his past.
"Braveheart" (1995)Mel Gibson is William Wallace, a bold Scotsman who used the steel of his blade and the fire of his intellect to rally his countrymen to liberation.
"Schindler's List" (1993)The indelible true story of the enigmatic Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a member of the Nazi party, womanizer, and war profiteer who saved
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The last time we spoke to Mark Kermode, he'd just launched his book about the state of movie criticism, Hatchet Job. Since then, he's embarked on a nationwide tour with the book, and undertaken dozens of Q&As with audiences about it.

And that, as Hatchet Job continues to thrive in paperback, is where we started...

I spoke to you just as you launched Hatchet Job, and in your words, since then you've "toured the arse off it". You've done Q&As with the people who've read your book, and who you wrote it for.

So what have you learned about what audiences feel regarding film critics, and where they sit in the world?

I think the most important thing was when I started writing it, I was, as you know,
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They returned, wearing their blue and white stripes as badges of courage. And resilience. And resolve.
Survivors of the Nazis' Auschwitz concentration camp returned Tuesday to the complex in Oswiecim, Poland, to mark the 70th anniversary of their liberation by the Soviet army at the end of World War II.
Many came with the notorious stripes of their former death-camp prison uniforms fashioned into scarves, or, like Miroslaw Celka, 89, into a sash bearing his former prisoner number.
The presidents of Germany and France, along with prominent activists like Steven Spielberg, who directed the 1993 Holocaust film Schindler's List, joined some 300 survivors
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They returned, wearing their blue and white stripes as badges of courage. And resilience. And resolve.
Survivors of the Nazis' Auschwitz concentration camp returned Tuesday to the complex in Oswiecim, Poland, to mark the 70th anniversary of their liberation by the Soviet army at the end of World War II.
Many came with the notorious stripes of their former death-camp prison uniforms fashioned into scarves, or, like Miroslaw Celka, 89, into a sash bearing his former prisoner number.
The presidents of Germany and France, along with prominent activists like Steven Spielberg, who directed the 1993 Holocaust film Schindler's List, joined some 300 survivors
»

The Best Actor chart is revised for your perusal with our usual game of 'how'd they get nominated' -- especially relevant in this stacked category (sniffle goodbye Timothy Jake Fiennes-Oyelowo) -- and the readers poll of who you think is actually best.

So check that out and vote, would you?

Though I've already expressed my disappointment in the Acdemy's shortlist given the wide variety of strong performances they didn't love enough, one thing that is satisfying about it is how many first timers we have. Indeed, had they not nominated Bradley Cooper and chosen, say, Oyelowo or Spall we could have had an all virgin Best Actor lineup.

From humble Irish beginnings to full-fledged Hollywood stardom, Liam Neeson has had a whirlwind career.

Heck, he even reinvented the action hero.

Coming up in the '80s, Neeson enjoyed moderate success on stage and screen. It was his star turn in a 1992 production of "Anna Christie," however, that inadvertently catapulted him to fame. After seeing a performance of the Broadway play, Steven Spielberg cast Neeson in his now acclaimed "Schindler's List" (1993) and made the Irishman a Hollywood leading man. This winter, Neeson is back as another noble ass-kicker in the action movie "Taken 3."

From his early influences to his own fighting prowess, here are 30 things you probably don't know about Liam Neeson.

1. Liam John Neeson was born June 7, 1952 in Ballymena, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

2. His mother was a cook, while his father was a caretaker at a local primary school.

I'm sure someone is fan-editing this even as I type, but since it's a slow week and since no one alive would actually want to watch a two-hour speculative video composed entirely of content we've already seen in eight-plus hours of other movies, here's a rundown you can read in five or ten minutes, in an armchair by a fire, the way J.R.R. Tolkien intended. Omitting the very first shot of Bilbo striking a match (because this isn't Schindler's List), we open on Bilbo disappearing down the circular tunnel of Bag-End and then continue through the preamble and the Erebor prologue, as they appear in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. (This sequence will now be the site of Peter Jackson's only cameo in the film,...

En route to Palm Springs yesterday afternoon, I saw the news that the National Society of Film Critics had gone against the flow, where most would have expected a "Boyhood" win, and named Jean-Luc Godard's "Goodbye to Language" the year's best film. What I wasn't fully aware of until this morning was the wave of displeasure it apparently spurred.
First, some thoughts on the organization's history. They often settle on something perfectly reasonable if not inspired, and sometimes that falls outside the sphere of major Best Picture contenders. "Inside Llewyn Davis," "Amour," "Melancholia," "Waltz with Bashir," "Pan's Labyrinth," "American Splendor," "Mulholland Drive," "Yi Yi: A One and a Two" — that's just a brief, selective history. And I'm forever in love with their "Out of Sight" choice in 1998.
Only five films have won all three major critics group awards (Nsfc, Lafca and Nyfcc): "The Social Network," "The Hurt Locker,
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Liam Neeson's third outing as over-protective family man Bryan Mills sees him on the run for murder after his ex-wife (Famke Janssen) turns up dead in his apartment. Forest Whitaker heads the investigation, which soon enough uncovers the involvement of nasty Russian gangsters, but Olivier Megaton's uneven, anaemic direction ensures Taken 3 fails again to recapture the magic of the original.2008's Taken was a surprise hit for writer-producer Luc Besson and director Pierre Morel, dictating a surprise shift in career path for journeyman actor Liam Neeson. Since starting out in the industry in the late 70s, Neeson only really surfaced as a bankable leading man in the 90s, but even then struggled to define himself as either an action hero or romantic lead. 1993's Schindler's List...

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